If you were able to visit or stay at St. Andrew's Camp this summer you know about some of the great fellowship we shared. Our staff had a lot of newcomers with new ideas to share, we had more campers this year and volunteers helped spruce up our environment like never before.

This year Nick Finley headed up the camp as program director, and assisted the staff as it adjusted to all the rigors of life at camp.Nick has now finished his studies program and is engaged to Larissa Pawelchak. Our congratulations! Other male staff included Marius and Andrei Anghel from Romania, now living in Jersey City, who taught us a lot about sports and crafts; and Peter Zahirsky from Ohio who contributed crafts, sports and swimming abilities. Peter comes from old St. Andrew's lineage and arrived with high standards for campfire and bonfire engineering.

New in the girls' dorm were two women from the Colorado Rockies.Marie Pylypczuk. headed up the girls' dorm and provided much elective creativity - especially with the ever-popular DUCT TAPE. Erin Major led our CIT (SA's are now called CIT's) program and arrived with many good ideas for rainy day games and insights for our spiritual journey.Vicky Stavrevsky came from Maryland and provided waterfront safety as well as many other sports and craft talents. As with Peter, Vicky comes from a strong St. Andrew's lineage and lived up to the prank repertoire of her clan. Returnees, both full-time and part-time, included Vanessa Downing, now in her last year at SUNY Albany, Tim Chupeck our WSI and a teacher in Syracuse, NY, Tanya Lapchuk, now at Boston College, and Phil Berdy. The blend of old and new brought new dimensions to our program.

Our CIT's were busy serving the community in the kitchen, rebuilding fire pits, moving beds, and leading field activities with the staff.They included: Meredith Garretson, Rachel Holman, Antoinette Nickelson, Elina Bardanova, and Tamta Ninua; Caleb Smith, Ilia Mashkin, Ryan Reimund, Phil Khmelnitski, and Jemal Ninua.We experienced first hand that much growth happens through group and community resolution interpersonal drama. Although working together is often more painful the end results are better, stronger and more complete than those achievable by individual's tackling issues alone. CIT's are the muscle and bone of the camp's workforce. For the upcoming year we have improved plans for CIT programs designed to develop strong positive life and leadership skills.

We were specially blessed with several clergy who spent weekends or even their whole vacations with us. Father Aaron Archer has taken his memories and started a new series in his parish Bulletin Tales from Camp. Father Paul Shafran provided us all with much-needed insight from a historical perspective. Father Michael Anderson always contributes a prospective for staff and campers concerning key reasons they participate at St. Andrew's. Father Stephen Belonik provided deep insights on vocation, especially that of the priesthood.

Our alumnus, Father James Starvesky spent a week with us at camp and several of his parishioners joined us as campers. Fr. James contributed his enthusiasm and joy for Christ and used the opportunity to get to know some of his parishioners better. Clergy participation, in addition to making the sacraments available, focuses all involved toward the life in Christ in ways that would otherwise be lost. Heartfelt thanks to all.

Special Nights

Special nights this year were filled with their usual excitement. The 'Old Friends Band' again provided Country-Western night with superb musical background for learning traditional American dances.Phil Berdy taught us some Salsa dances on Latino night to expand our appreciation and repertoire of traditional ethnic dances.

Teen Week

Last summer, Father Michael Medis of NJ led our Teen Week program and challenged our 25 teens with activities that explored their identities in the world as Christians, as teens, and as friends.Fr. Michael extended his participation (and will be long remembered for this sacrifice) by sleeping in the boys' dorm.It certainly helped everyone have less angst about "boys dorm nights".Our traditional trip to Sea Breeze gave everyone a chance to unwind and have fun together.

Men's Retreat

This fall several men attended a "combo event"- they were able to help spruce up St. Andrew's with paint and repair during the day and share fellowship and discussion led by Father James Stavrevsky in the evening.John Mace, our fabulous camp cook, returned with his wife Juliana, to help cook for thisevent.Our thanks to Roger Behrend , Victor Deny-senko,John Kozak, Bob Piwinski, Mitch VanDuyn, and John Dyryanka. It was an opportunity for fellowship and a great brainstorming session for the future plans of St. Andrew's Camp as well as a very productive work time!!! We expect some great fruit from the seeds planted that weekend!

Many thanks to:

Our devoted volunteers John Mace, our fabulous cook; John Kozak our plant engineer; Jay and Melody Holman longstanding ad hoc hard workers

with our web site, with laundry and grass cutting; Juan Astorga our weekend cook and his assistant Olga Shewchuk; Robert Roebuck. who volunteered his expertise to doing a thorough camp facility-repair needs evaluation. We were fortunate to have hthe lumber skills of Fr. Micheal Zahirsky whose efforts greatly enhanced our lake view and who removed several older trees for us.

The Eagans who donated our much-needed benches; the Reimunds who donated games and baked goods; Juliana Mace who provided videos, books and games.

Delores Grabko, Julius and Katherine Rigo, Argyra Lapchuk, Dr. Al Rossi, Matushka War-necke, Olga Shewchuk, and Alex and Jennifer Cadman who are among the St. Andrew's financial benefactors.

OUR CURRENT CHALLENGE

St. Andrew's Camp has, for almost 50 years, provided the environment and training for youth and adults to grow in their knowledge, experience and love of Jesus Christ. Many of our alumni are serving the Church as priests and lay leaders, while others have found meaningful community work that grew out of their camp experiences.

Many adults who were campers, SA's CIT"s and counselors comment that their commitment to the Church began at St. Andrew's. At the very least our camp is a worthy Orthodox missionary endeavor with enormous untapped potential.

We at St. Andrew's believe it is important to continue to offer this quality experience and improve our programs and facilities to better serve the needs of all people on their spiritual journey.

The camp is planning major improvements in the near future.We hope that before the 50th anniversary we can have new boys' quarters completed and renovate the existing building to provide more dining hall space, a nurse's office, camp store, more indoor classroom and recreational space. God willing, a beautiful new waterfront area with a new dock and areas for canoes, rowboats and small sailing craft will also be developed . Perhaps a couple of waterfront campsites for vacationing visitors is in the works. We welcome and absolutely need everyone's help in making these ideas a reality.

The task we've undertaken is daunting. Like you, it seems there's always more on our plates than we can comfortably handle. With God's Grace, the efforts of our staff and board, and your contributions of ideas, money and talents, a much improved facility will be available in the near future to serve our children and the whole Church. As a beginning, if you know of anyone that may be interested who is not on our mailing list - let us know - and please consider volunteering some of your own time, talents and resources to this mission.

Needed:

Counselors for Summer 2005 must be at least 18 years old.Teachers and college students make for great counselors.Special talents not necessary, but we do always need Water Safety Instructors, lifeguards, sports, crafts and nature enthusiasts, music teachers and choral directors, kitchen assistants, canoeing, rowing and sailing instructors. Anyone with enthusiasm and willingness to engage young people and mentor them is encouraged to apply by either calling Daria York at (315) 383-2686 for applications or by downloading them from the webpage at standrewscamp.com.

Also: Volunteers to do our laundry once a week and to help prepare the camp during the months of May and June are also needed. Bakers who can bring cookies, brownies, and cakes are always welcome.

This year we are asking friends to collect appropriate decorations and costume parts for our Special Nights. As many of you know, Thursday nights at camp is spent in activities (and eating foods) that focus on a theme.Among the themes we usually celebrate are Asian Night, Mediterranean Night, Slavic Night, Country Western Night, Latino Night, Hawaiian Night, and Circus Night.If you have any of the hats, lays, costumes, etc that might enhance these celebrations, please send them to us or better yet come visit and bring them with you!!!

Craft supplies (list to come in the next newsletter) are also very much appreciated.

Watch for the Dates!!!

A special event in the spring will be a tree-planting Saturday. We hope to plant over 200 small trees and shrubs along the roadside to better block our property from the traffic on Rte 49.Volunteers are asked to bring a shovel and any rooted cuttings from Rose of Sharon, Pussy-willow, fir and pine trees and any other fast growing species to which you have access. The more the better! Watch for the dates!

The Wish List:Snow blower, Sturdy outdoor picnic tables and benches, new pool tables and ping-pong tables, new rowboat and canoes, copier, computer k,scanner,, trees. Large outdoor grill, heavy duty lawn mowers.